Epiph

I was getting ready to post a comment on someone’s thread on Ravelry when I had an epiphany:  I bring up my age in conversations not so much because I’m really paranoid about my age, but because I’m paranoid about being 29, single, childless, and with no prospects on the horizon.  I desperately want to whinge about it, but I know that people’s responses are going to be “oh, you’re not that old.  God has the right one.”  Blah blah.  It’s easy to say when you’re 22, with a boyfriend or married.  I should know, I said it enough.  But eventually you start to realize it’s not really true.  Eventually, there is such a thing as “too old”; the guys are married, divorced, or gay.  And you know, God might not have a “right one” for me.  For some reason I might be destined to be a lonely spinster, and won’t that just be jolly.

Usually I start to hem and haw a bit at this point, because honestly, my life is good, I enjoy a lot of things about being single, but for this post, I’m going to leave it.  I don’t always like being alone.  The sight of a solitary future fading away in front of me isn’t comforting.  A lifetime of being single doesn’t really appeal to me.

Dear future sister-in-law

She’s going to be your mother-in-law in a month.

We get to integrate you into our family, so I think a little more effort on your part would be nice.  Although I like you, you’re crazy and apparently haven’t learned what is and isn’t appropriate to say.  Work on that.

We’re willing to get past the fact that you have been institutionalized and have more baggage than a train station; obviously we’re less than perfect as well and have great baggage of our own.  We’re a little less willing to get past the fact that you seem to intend to do nothing about any of it and will probably drag my little brother down with you.

I think a little more gratitude for the fact that my dad replaced the light fixture in your bathroom with a beautiful new one and unclogged your bath tub would be nice; in fact, any gratitude at all would have been an improvement.  I know they tend to plan projects and be a little overbearing, believe me, I know, but you could have been just a tad more gracious about the whole thing.  Try smiling and saying “I know you’re trying to help with our house, but right now we’re a little overwhelmed with the wedding and moving in.  Thank you for the ideas and maybe when things get settled down a bit we can look into them.”  They will move heaven and earth for you if you’re civil to them.

Basically, what I’m trying to say is quit making my mom cry.  And if you make my brother sorry he married you, I’m not going to be happy.

Love (minus points for turning this visit into a total downer.  See: Mom crying),

Me

Can’t sleep

It’s 10:42pm, I have to get up early to head over the mountains to get ready for my cousins wedding, and I can’t sleep.   I just got a phone call from another cousin telling me that her sister just engaged tonight, and I’m thrilled for her, but all of a sudden it’s weighing heavily on my mind how blindingly alone I am, and how very much this wasn’t how things were supposed to turn out.  All I see stretching before me are empty years, years that I was planning on spending with someone else, but now I’ve cut out even the friend that might have spent them with me.  My friends are married, having children, or I’m not speaking to them (was that the right choice?  The lack of certainty bothers me more that I would like to admit.).  Joel is engaged, proceeding with his happy little life, having no idea just how bleak life can be when you’re alone, especially now that I really know what it could have been like.  ::laughs:: I just realized that this is normally what my old journal entries used to look like.  I’m just sharing them now with a cold, uncaring cyberspace.  My sorrow is like a bird in my chest, and at any moment it will break free and fly away with me, leaving my physical remains slumped in the chair.  Or it will stay solidly anchored, and I will eventually crawl into bed, unable to bear the harsh light of the screen any longer, or the sense of my own melodrama.  I always want to use words to expose myself, but I can never take the passion of them seriously enough to make them speak.  In fact, I most likely will look back on this blog with a vague sense of embarrassment and condescending amusement.  But in this moment, I need the words.  I need to open my chest and let the bird fly away.  I need to create the spell that will make everything okay, that will fix the mess I’ve made of my life, that will fix the flaws that rule me.  I suppose that’s the major difference between this blog and my journal – in this blog the words can be typed so quickly that the spell is almost in my reach, almost grasped, but never quite.

Allergies

As much as I love this time of the year, with it’s glorious flowers and rainstorms and warm-but-not-ridiculously-hot sunshine and perfect shades of green, I’m not a huge fan of the allergies. Mine aren’t bad enough to require medication, which is good, but that also means that I don’t get medication and instead get to sniffle my way through a couple of weeks before the oak stops blooming. However, I get things like the rhodies blooming in Lithia, so I suppose it works out. This photo is from last year, but I know they’re blooming right now, so it seems appropriate!

Check Yes [ ] or No [ ]

Have you ever had one of those experiences where you’re just not sure what you’re supposed to be feeling? I’m having one of those right now. Joel is engaged. It’s been two and a half years since we broke up on the one hand and I’d better be well over him, but on the other, this is the guy I thought was The One, my match, my mate. So I’m torn. Should I be feeling devastated? Sad? Angry? Happy, for crying out loud? I might feel a little angry, but nothing else. Not sad, not happy, perhaps a little resigned. I just finished a music video of him, simply because I’d started it and needed to get it done, and as I sat there looking at the pictures it was like looking into the face of a stranger. How does that happen? I mean, I know this guy (somehow I don’t think he’s changed in fundamentals) intimately, I know his face almost better than my own, and yet, he is no one I know. It’s as though that year and four months never happened, even though I have the scars to prove they did, and now his is a face that I recognize but with which I have no connection. I must admit that there is still the shadow of sorrow for what might have been, for a love that wasn’t enough (ohhhh, bitterness!), for a friendship that could have been forever. *sits in silence* Is it too much to hope that I have finally started to heal? That after two and a half years, I might really be able to view my life in my own terms rather than in terms of Joel? I can hope, because I’m not crying, I’m not screaming, I’m not comatose. As Lisa Loeb is singing “The drone in your voice and the fly on the wall/said it’s over, it’s over, it’s over, it is/And what do I wish for you/what do I wish?/It’s over, it is.”

CSI’s Space Oddity

LOVED this episode! It is so nice to have one of their quirky episodes rather than all the time serious. And it’s always good to see the lab folks. One thing I’m not so thrilled with is how the rest of the cast treats the pseudo-Trekkies and their culture with disdain. In the days of Grissom, we saw many different sub-cultures (remember the Furries?) and while there was ookiness expressed, I don’t feel like there was the same level of contempt that I felt in this episode. Which, I need to say, I thought was hilarious, even with Nicky and Greg’s snobbery. I was actually surprised at Greg; considering some of the other things he’s been into, it was sad that his character was so…. meh, compared with the old Greg who danced around with gloves on his head. The side fantasies from Hodges are wonderful and it was enjoyable to see the fun part of CSI again. Just wish it happened more often!

PS  Oh yes, and there was the cameo by Mike Newton from Twilight.  Priceless!  Especially in his atrocious hairpiece!!

Season Two Episode One

I have to admit that I’m having some difficulty with the direction Jericho is taking/took (I keep forgetting how far behind I am).  I guess I got used to the more “intimate” problems of the town when it was cut off and, although I realize that inter-community violence would be a given, it seems to me that in the first season they skipped a lot of time that could have been used to expand on characters and plots rather than rushing into New Bern like they did.  As it is, there are several characters that they took the time to get us involved with that are suddenly off the radar…. at least as of episode one of season two *looks shifty*  Yes, perhaps I need to watch more before making my judgement calls.  Man, I wish I could share this blog and my commentary with my cousin Kevin.  Oh wait, that’s what Facebook is for!  I think I’m going to take a break and go watch the episode of CSI I’ve been hearing so much about.

Episode 20

Argh! Dramas! Why do I watch them! I think the problem I’m developing is that the behavior of the people is all too real. I wish I could believe that humanity was inherently decent or something like that, but we just aren’t. Maybe it’s the instinct for self-preservation, maybe it’s inherent selfishness. I don’t know.

I’ve been thinking about what I would do in a nuclear disaster. My hometown is actually well-located in terms of fall out patterns. We have (had in the past at least) decent agricultural land, water, and game. I’m torn between holing up at my parents’ house and heading east into the high desert. I KNOW I’m totally unprepared for any sort of disaster, much less a far-reaching one of the kind shown in Jericho, but perhaps it’s good that I even contemplate the possibility. What’s the saying? “Even a paranoid has real enemies”?

Jericho

One of the plus sides to being depressed is that I watch a LOT of television.  Well, okay, by a lot I mean, some. And by some, I mean as much as a person can who doesn’t have a television can watch on her computer in the middle of a busy schedule.  And one of my beloved cousins recently introduced me to Jericho, a show that, like the wonderful Firefly, was canceled before its time.  And I LOVE IT!!!!  Maybe it’s my hick, redneck roots, but something about its post-apocalypitic setting just rings true in this little old heart of mine.  Or it could be that I live in one of the safer areas of the country in case of nuclear attack.  Anyway, even though it’s totally making me paranoid and I keep imagining what I would do in case of nuclear apocalypse (or zombie apocalypse for that matter), I’m really liking this show.  Um, oh dear, this is me and my escapism again, isn’t it?

2.5 mg

I’ve dropped my dosage down from 5mg to 2.5mg a day. At this point, my dosage is so minimal that I don’t see how it can be helping/hurting, but I’ve been so zombie-like in the mornings and so depressed that I’m going to try taking less to see what happens. It’s so frustrating to have been diagnosed, thrown onto a medication, and then to lose my insurance/ability to receive treatment/option for other medication. I keep thinking that I might be better off just coming off Abilify completely. These past few months have been so completely miserable that I’m honestly amazed that I’ve made it through without a nervous breakdown or something. How do people survive years of this? It’s insane!